


Make It Better

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s12e01 Keep Calm and Carry On, Headspace, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 03:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8313031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: Dean’s first thought, when he sees his mom for the first time in over thirty years, is that all the pain has been worth it if it means he gets to have her back.
“Mom?” he says.
It feels like the most important word he’s ever spoken.





	

Dean’s first thought, when he sees his mom for the first time in over thirty years, is that all the pain has been worth it if it means he gets to have her back.

“Mom?” he says.

It feels like the most important word he’s ever spoken.

\--

She takes some convincing.

Dean tells her one thing about herself after another, all these facts and stories he knows by heart. He had hoarded them when he was little, listened with rapt attention during the times -- fewer and farther between as time dragged on and Dean’s begging became more annoying than endearing -- when John spoke of her. He knew his father kept a journal, and Dean kept his own, too, writing everything John told him down in slow, careful handwriting. He kept track of names and dates and places, stored them all up not just for his own sake, but also so that he would be able to remember them when Sam was finally old enough to understand them.

When that time finally came, Dean rationed them like he had learned to ration out their food, giving Sam one small morsel at a time to keep up the illusion that there was always more where that came from.

Now, decades later, Dean wraps his arms around his mom and thinks, _Just wait ‘til Sam hears this one._

\--

Dean spends the drive back to the bunker casting furtive glances at his mom.

The thing is, Mary looks like someone Dean recognizes. He was old enough when she died -- has seen her enough in photographs, in heaven, in trips through time -- that he remembers her face and her voice. He has spent so long clinging to the few memories he has from childhood, the few moments he was granted on the axis mundi, that the easy affection, the open warmth, is what he has come to expect from the image he has so carefully constructed of her.

He wants that now, too. He wants so badly for her to reach out and cradle his face in her hands and tell him she loves him. He wants it to be as simple and easy as it was in his heaven.

It isn’t, though. It won’t be. This Mary is not a memory or a construct or a cheap imitation. This time, she’s _real._

It is simultaneously one of the best and the worst things that has ever happened to him.

Dean recognizes her, but she doesn’t recognize him. Oh, she might see himself in him -- might notice all the bits and pieces of her personality, the things she liked and loved that Dean has spent years making a part of himself in as many ways as he could so that as long as he lived, some part of her would live on with him. But he knows that, deep down, Dean, to her, is a four year old boy with bright eyes, an easy smile, a floppy haircut. Dean is a child who loves hugs and sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Dean, to her, is not whatever he actually is now.

“He raised you and Sam to...” Mary had said, looking hurt and betrayed, after Dean had given her the highlight reel, the parts of his life that could be boiled down into a cohesive narrative where he and Sam are always the heroes.

It had taken all Dean had not to say, “I didn’t want it, I still don’t want it, I don’t I don’t I _don’t_ \--”

“I’ll explain everything,” he had promised, but whether he was promising that to her or to himself, he still isn’t sure.

He is biting back the truth, even now. He doesn’t want to put that on her, on this person who is basically a complete stranger bound to him only by blood and a few faded memories.

Dean drives, and he does his best to hold himself together, to cling only to his excitement and push everything else to the wayside. He’s trying to ignore his apprehension and his guilt; trying, by sheer force of will, to change the fact that he’s scared.

He doesn’t quite succeed. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t deny that he’s downright terrified that if he lets on how fucked up he really is, if he lets Mary get to know the person he’s become, if she sees that he bears only the most tenuous resemblance to the Dean she knew as her son, there’s no way she could be anything but disappointed.

Dean drives and keeps his silence.

\--

His mom is a stranger and Sam is missing, and all Dean can think is that he should have known that getting what you want always comes with a price attached.

For a second, though, while Cas is hugging him, Dean forgets about all of that, about all of his fears and doubts and misgivings. For those few moments, all that matters is the ease with which they embrace, the comforting familiarity. All he feels is excitement as he introduces his mother to an angel -- and not just any angel, but _Castiel._

Dean tries to hold onto that feeling after Cas moves away and he becomes painfully aware of the space between himself and the other members of his family. Keeping Mary at arm’s length is the last thing Dean wants to do, but he figures a little breathing room is the least of the things he owes her.

If nothing else, it gives him time to watch her as she moves around the bunker, as she sits next to him in the Impala, as she helps search for Sam and, later, to fight for him.

He realizes, to his dismay, that he doesn’t know her nearly as well as he thought. His knowledge is limited to second-hand stories and a couple short days he spent with her before she became the person she was when she died. He sees the gaps in his knowledge everywhere, notices them in everything about her he doesn’t recognize -- her mannerisms, her movements, the way she wears the clothes he’s given her. He doesn’t recognize the wicked smile she gives him across the back seat of the Impala. He doesn’t recognize the steel in her voice as she tells Cas, “Hurt him.”

He watches her and realizes how little he actually knows about her.

He feels the loss of those thirty-three years more keenly than ever.

\--

They’re driving in silence again, and without having to say anything, without having to ask, Cas reaches across the seat and takes Dean’s free hand in his own.

Cas is such a comforting presence next to him that it’s hard to remember who he used to be before, to remember what they used to be to one another. The memories are starting to fade and blur in the face of the reality of who Cas is now. Cas isn’t the angel he stabbed in the chest, the one to whom emotions were anathema, the one who called him a broken shell and Sam an abomination.

Nowadays, Cas is the friend who’s overjoyed to see him alive, who clings to him like he’s the only thing that matters. Cas is family who would do anything to get Sam back. Cas is the kind of person who knows to close the gap between them and hold Dean’s hand when he needs it, who knows how important that is without having to be told, just like he knew how big a deal it was that Mary was back without Dean having to say a word.

Sitting there in the Impala with Cas’ fingers laced with his own, it’s suddenly easy for Dean to think that if he and Cas could get to the point they are now given where they started, there’s no reason he can’t do the same with his mom. It’s easy to think that maybe she could be proud of more than just how well he’s kept the car, even if she did have the whole story. It’s easy to think that even though Sam is still missing, they must be close to finding him. That he’s waiting for them just around the next corner.

Dean sits with his hand linked with Cas’ and suddenly he knows everything is going to be okay, feels it deep in his bones in a way he hasn’t felt in over thirty years.

Dean squeezes Cas’ hand as if to say: _Thanks for understanding. Thanks for being here._

_Thanks for everything._


End file.
